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What is Tempera Poster Paint?

What is Tempera Poster Paint?www.schoolpaints.comThe Tempera
paint that is used in the school classroom is simply a ‘Temporary’ paint. A colourful
paint that is water-soluble allowing it to be washed from surfaces quickly and
easily making ideal for educational use or where groups of children are
painting.

There is a lot of confusion between traditional "Egg Tempera" and todays
Tempera Poster paint. Some parents that have children with allergies google
'Tempera Paint' and find 'egg tempera' and the confusion starts.

Egg Tempera:

Egg Tempera is one of the oldest mediums for fine art painting, dating
back to Roman Egypt and used by most of the Great Masters of the Renaissance.
It is made with egg yolk and is a permanent fast-drying paint. It is very hard
to find today as few brands make it. One of the most popular brands in the
artist paint world Daler-Rowney in the UK do still make this for artists. It is
designed for artist use and not for school. See: www.daler-rowney.com/egg-tempera

School Tempera is what you will see everywhere in schools today. It is
the most popular daily used art paint in the world. More preschoolers and
primary school children are painting with this in cities everyday than any
other paint.

It is ‘normally’ a safe non-toxic paint that is very colourful and quick
drying. There are no eggs, nuts or wheat in this type of paint. It is made for
kids to paint with safely as this is the main priority in paint in schools.

Tempera paint dries quickly and lasts a long time. But the paint will eventually
spoil. To prevent spoilage, close the lid tightly after use and avoid returning
unused liquid tempera to its original container.

Safety Concerns:

It is recommended that you carefully read the labels or read the
manufacturer’s MSDS (Medical Safety Data Sheet) to see the ingredients if you
are concerned.

There is a lot of very low grade product out in the market. Even some of
the most well-known brand names get product made in China that is low grade as
this is a very price driven market. Some are almost just coloured water. Don’t
be fooled by the big brands name for quality.

WASHING:

The most important part of the temporary paint is to wash off. This does
differ from brand to brand. Most lighter colours will wash from surfaces and
some fabrics. But the darker colours are the concern as some will not wash-off
surfaces and nearly all colours leave a residue stain on clothing.

Most washable brands:

We are not into naming brands that do not wash out, we will leave that to you to do in the comments below.

7 comments:

We wrongly ordered crayloa washable last year... It had this strong smell like a floor polish. When we poured it out into bowls it just got stronger. We ended up dumping it.... Anyone else found that. We were very surprized for such a known brand...

I've been looking for ingredients in tempera since I was grinding thick tempera painted by kids yearly over a sculpture in a kids' museum, and cracked off in chunks at years end; making jewelry. After weeding out dumb posts about EGG TEMPERA, which this article points out is RARE, I found that tempera (poster paint) can instead contain ACRYLIC RESIN, which I believe I've smelled burning when grinding beads of this paint. Modern floor "waxes" don't contain wax, but acrylic polymer, which is also in wall paint. My big concern, btw, is that I've gotten such difficulty in breathing, not touched by my asthma inhalers used for cedar allergy season here, that I'm worried about silicosis from airborn clay, being an eventual problem...It starts as an allergic reaction to silica in the lungs, so perhaps tempera workers should avoid dust as potters do. Silicosis was once known as "potters" rot" because I guess potters suffered from it.

I have searched online and looked on the bottles on of tempera paint the none state ingredients. Not knowing if some tempera paint contain egg and other ingredients. Thanks for this info it clears a few things up for me.

We use Super Tempera and Super Tempera UV Glow. They are really good. I can not say that you can wash them from clothes at all, it leaves light stains, but cleans easily from any other surfaces and skin. It doesn't smell and colours are so bright!

The washing from clothes is a difficult one. Only one paint claims to wash from all fabrics FAS Total Wash and it does. But the issue here is that people want super bright tempera paint colours which require a lot of very strong pigments. But the more colourful pigments added in the formulation the harder job you have when removing them from all surfaces. It is hard to find the balance. Thanks for your comments.. Tony

We've used finger paints (also works on paper) from Huuman Innovations. They wash out easy with soap and water, or in the washing machine. a little bit of marks left on some of the white clothes, but washed out of everything else.